When Will the Mute Swan Sing? On the “Orientalism” and its “False Truth”

Hui-qing LIU

Abstract

Edward Said, by surveying closely and decoding the Orientalism from the eighteenth until the mid-twentieth century, makes truth articulate from inside the Orientalist untruth, to echo Marx: the Orient could not represent themselves; they had to be represented by Europe; yet the originally “well-intentioned” Orientalist representation, the discourses of Orientalism turn out to be but of “schematization” of the entire Orient; European culture, by speaking, interpreting the Orient, managed to construct its own domination over other non-White cultures, managed to colonize the East in fine name. What passed for universal truths about European superiority and the other side inferiority yet now prove to be merely culturally specific, historically relative constructions in service of colonialism and imperialism. The Orient was “Orientalized” within systematic economy of Western imagination, invention, one-sidedness, or even untruthfulness, lies. Key words: “universal truth”; Orientalism; culture; Colonialism; Imperialism